The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-10-27

blackens his face with charcoal and
fasts till he has a vision of what he
calls God. Ny God, can see best when /
take my hat off and let the sunshine blaze
in my face, and after a reasonable break
fast. He is not God of blackness and star
walton, but oflight and plentitude, and the
glory of the monday sun is Egyptian
midnight compared to it.
There they go-two brothers. The one
was converted year ago in church, one
Sunday morning during prayer, or SER
mon, or hymn. No one knew it at the
time. The persons on either side of him
suspected nothing, but in that young
mans soul this process went on:
"Lord, here am, young man amid the
temptations Of city life, and am afraid to
risk them alone; come and be my guar
dian and my help; save me from making
the mistake that some of my comrades are
making, and save me now"
And quicker than a flash God rolled
Heaven into his soul. He is just as jolly
as he used to be, is just as brilliant as he
used to be. He can strike ball or catch
one as easily as before he was converted.
With gun or fishing-rod in this summer
vacation he was just as skillful as before.
The world is brighter to him than ever.
He appreciates pictures, music, innocent
hilarity, social life, good jokes, and has
plenty of fun, frst-class fun, glorious
fun.
But his brother Is going down hill. In
the morning his head aches from the
champagne debauch. Everybody sees he
is in rapid descent. What cares he for
right or decency, or the honor of his
family? Turned out Of employment,
depleted in health, cast down
in spirits, the typhoid fever strikes him in
the smallest room on the fourth story of
fifth-rate boarding house, cursing God
and calling for his mother, and fighting
back demons from his dying pillow, which
is besweated and torn to rags. Heplunges
out of this world with the shrek of a
destroyed spirit.
Alas for that kind of fun! 1t is re-.
morse. 1t is despair. 1t is blackness of
darkness. 1t is woe unending and long
reverberating, and crushing as though all
the mountains of all continents rolled on
him in one avalanche. My soul, stand
back from such fun. Young man there is
no fun in shipwrecking your character,
no fun in disgracing your fathers
name. There is no fun in breaking your
physical pangs of the dissolute. There is
no fun in the profigate's death-bed.
There is no fun in an undone eternity.
Paracelsus, out of the ashes of burnt
rose, said he could recreate the rose, but
he failed in the alchemic undertaking,
and the roseate life once burned down in
sin can never again be made to blossom.
Oh. this plumb line of the everlasting
rirr Ca1 d, Ill
to show US our moral reflections.
God will throw it over all churches
to show whether they are doing useful
work or are attending instances of idle
ness and pretense. He will throw that
plumb line over all nations to demonstrate
whether their laws are just or cruel, their
rulers good or bad, their ambitions holy
or infamous. He threw that plumb line
over the Spanish monarchy of other days,
and what became of her? Ask the splint-
cred hulks of her overthrown armada.
He threw that plumb line over French
imperialism, and what was the result?
Ask the ruins of the Tuileries, and the
fallen column of the Place Vendome, and
the grave trenches of Sedan, and the blood
of revolutions at different times rolling
through the Champs Elysees. He threw
that plumb line over ancient Rome,
and what became of the realm
of the Caesars? Ask her war eagles,
with beaks dulled and wings broken, flung
helpless into the Tiber. He threw it over
the Assyrian Empire of thousand years,
the thrones of Semiramus and Sardana-
palus and Shalmaneser, of twenty-seven
victorious expeditions, the cities of Phoe.
nicia kneeling to the scepter, and all the
world blanched in the presence. What
became of all the grandeur Ask the
fallen palaces of Khorsabad and the
corpses of 1876, 900 soldiery slain by the an
gel of the Lord in one night, and the AS
syrian sculptures of the worlds museums,
all that now remains of that splendor be-
fore which nations staggered and
crouched.
God is now throwing that plumb.line
over this American Republic, and it is a
solemn time with this Nation, and whether
we keep his Sabbaths or dishonor them,
whether righteousness or iniquity domi-
nate, whether we are Christians or infidel,
whether we fulfill our mission or refuse it,
whether we are for God or against him we'll
decide whether we shall as a nation go on
in higher and higher career or go down
in the same grave where Babylon and
Nineveh and ThebeJ and Assyria are
sepulchred.
"But," say you, s'if there be nothing
but plumb line, what can any of us do?
for there is an old proverb which truth
fully declares: If the best mans faults
were written on his forehead it would
make him pull his hat over his eyes,
What shall we do when, according to
Isaiah, God shall lay judgment to the
king and righteousness to the plummet?' 4"
All F! here is where the gospel comes in
with Saviour's righteousness to make up
for our deficits. And while see hanging
on the wall plumb line, see also hang
ing there a cross. And while the one
condemns us the other saves US, if only
we will hold to it. And here and now
you may be set free with more glorious
liberty than Hampden, or Sidney, or
Kosciusko ever fought for. Not out yon-
der, or down there, or up here, but just
where you are you may get it. The in
valid proprietress of a wealthy estate in
Scotland visited the continent of Europe
to get rid of her maladies, and she went
to Baden Baden and tried those waters,
and went to Carlsbad and tried those
waters, and went to Homburg and tried
those waters, and instead of getting better
she got worse, and in despair she said to a
physician: ''What shall do?"